South of Elfrida (5 page)

Just back from a recent trip to Indonesia, I went in for gallbladder surgery, picked up a hospital superbug, spent time in isolation, and nearly died. That's the long and short of it. The series of events happened so fast, and were so unexpected, that it seemed impossible they were happening to a woman who was known by her associates as organizationally anal-retentive. The experience was like driving down a summer road and being caught up in a tornado, the sort of thing you read about. Afterwards, roaming through the rooms of my glorious house on its hill in Boulder, I paused at this particular lovely ceramic or that remarkable painting; the house was crammed with exquisite rugs, wall hangings, trinkets, and crafts. Su-Zee Imports sold items to retailers in the western states, and there was a little warehouse on the property as well that employed four people in packing and shipping. “Not because I've lost my mind along with my gallbladder,” I told my long-time friend Myrna on the phone, “but because my whole fucking life is here, in things. What was I doing all those years?”

“Making money,” Myrna said.

I laughed and hung up, lay down, got up again—it hurt—and continued to cruise through and admire the house. Everything about it was mine—I'd designed it, chosen the architect, the woodworkers, and the painters. I scoped out the kitchen with its immaculate counters and shiny stovetop; between that and the untouchable look of zero-landscaped grounds, the house felt unlived in. Most of my life, I saw, had been lost in a business coma—driven, successful, and lonely as hell.

I called again. “What is it with gallbladders?”

“Hold on.” Myrna was tapping on her keyboard. “Gallstones mean bitterness, hard thoughts, pride.”

“Thanks for bucking me up.” Then I told her that since the damn surgery I had the urge to sell everything, get rid of it all.

“Don't do anything rash,” Myrna counselled. “Get a dog.”

A dog? What in the world would I do with a dog? I tried to picture one, came up with a Rottweiler with bared teeth. “What's bugging me is the pain in my missing gallbladder. The doctor says it's a phantom pain, impossible. He's prescribing anti-spasm pills and telling me to eat soup.”

“Love heals. You need something to love and a change of scenery. I'm having a Blue Moon Ceremony, second full moon in November. We'll be calling in the mountain spirits. The Apache warrior Cochise himself, if I'm lucky.”

“And I'm destined to be there? The planets are aligned in my chart?”

“Some gals from the ranch will be over. Bring the dog.”

“What the hell.”

Myrna had made a dramatic move from the East Coast to Arizona, parked herself in the Dragoon Mountains that she raved about. I imagined her house, made from real adobe bricks using dirt from the land (she'd made a big deal about it), with terra-cotta-coloured concrete floors (that she'd sanded herself) and solar panels on the roof; her decor would be minimal—a Navajo rug here, a piece of Western art there—because Myrna valued austerity.

I decided to try a change and had my hair dyed a dark purple-burgundy and tightly curled, so that with a band fastened around the top, I looked like a white woman's take on an African Zulu, a look that suited my tanned skin and long cheekbones. Next, after investigating puppies, I bought a purebred teacup poodle, a little guy with black curls and intelligent chocolate eyes, and named him Baby. Why not call him Baby? I'd missed out on having a child.

The breeder gave instructions that Baby needed to be with me night and day, so he would grow up calm and collected; the world was new to him, and I would be his comfort. Fine by me. Baby was responsive for something so small, adaptive, and willing, easy to train. Having him trekking behind, following me around the house, his little paws tapping on the tiles, made me smile as I went about complying with the doctor's orders, mincing vegetables for soup.

Of course I decided to go to Myrna's, and it worked out that a faithful employee, a wealthy gal from Connecticut, was delighted to carry on with managing Su-Zee Imports. “You can borrow our Roadtrek for your trip. Dave would love to demonstrate how it works.”

The Roadtrek was slightly bigger than a van and had all the amenities of a miniature home—a dining table, a TV, an armchair, and a double bed. Dave showed me how to manage the toilet and the water system—which hoses to use to dump “grey water” and “black water” (disgusting), and where they were stowed—how to light the pilots for the hot water tank, the furnace, the cook stove, and the refrigerator. It was a compact little world, and once again I thought,
What the hell.

Boulder was lightly dusting itself with snow when we set out. Baby found his place on the passenger seat and seemed contented just to be close. We drove west on the I-70 into Utah and camped two nights in Moab, near Arches National Park, in canyon country. “What have I been missing all these years?” I asked Baby. Having travelled all over eastern Asia for business, I'd missed seeing the locally beautiful places. Baby was happy in a dog-carrier backpack on walks. Other times, he liked being on his leash so he and his black velvet rhinestone collar could be admired. To avoid snow in the Utah high country, we detoured down through Navajo lands, dropping from Flagstaff to Phoenix, losing altitude along the way. Sometimes, on a steep hill, Baby would run from the front of the van to the back and then tumble on the carpet like a little ball to land near my feet.

On the last overnight before reaching Myrna's, I steered into the sort of place you choose on your way to somewhere else, a campground with twelve rough sites out in the open and no hookups for anything except water. In the shaggy eucalyptus trees, black birds—grackles—squeaked and whistled. When choosing the spot, I wasn't sure if the noisy birds overhead were a good sign, and later wished I'd paid attention to that inner alarm. But it was four in the afternoon, the hottest time of day in that part of Arizona, and besieged by the damn pain, I slid open the panel door, hoping for some relief from the heat. Just then, Baby threw up on the carpet runner and I shrieked. He seemed to fly out the open door, only to be hit by a fifth-wheel backing in to park beside me.

I remember I yelled, “Oh, no!” instead of his name. A man with a straggly growth of white beard stepped down from the cab. “Upon my grave, I am so sorry,” he said and clambered back in to pull forward. By then, seeing Baby's tiny shattered body, my blood sugar took a dive. The man's wife, wearing sunglasses with polka dot frames, brought an aluminum chair for me. She faced it away from where Baby lay.

The skinny old man's eyes were a watery hazel, and his wrinkled green T-shirt advertised,
MUSTANG RANCH
. The wife had those retro sunglasses. I can recall these details but can't focus on what Baby looked like in general, whether the white tuft of fur was on his left paw or his right paw. The man said, “I'm an ordained born-again preacher, so your little fella is in good hands.” I heard the sound of a shovel scraping, the sound of digging. It was scrubland country, high and dry, with low-growing thorny things gripping the dirt. Then he called me to the service.

“The service?”

At the woman's voice interrupting my story about Baby, I look around the patio at the group of five women gathered for the Blue Moon Ceremony, their faces ruddy from the wind that whips up in the Dragoon Mountains nearly every day, so Myrna says. They wear jeans and gobs of turquoise jewellery and cowboy boots. They've driven Dodge pickups or
SUV
s to Myrna's and give one another looks as they listen to me, the old friend, the stranger with the weird purplish hair, tell the story about the death of her little dog. I'd told Myrna essential bits when I'd arrived, and then ignored her touchy-feely questions, pleaded exhaustion. Now I can't seem to shut up. In the background Myrna moves nimbly between the house and the patio. I've kept an eye on the changing light on the mountains behind the women in the semicircle of chairs while recounting Baby's story. The woman asking the question about the service is a hefty gal in her forties with a tattoo of roses around her right ankle. Myrna places chips in a blue bowl on the table. She says, “Baby was a yogi.”

“Yogi?”

“A being that teaches you about yourself.”

Myrna is annoying just now. Baby was a dog. “The service,” I say, getting back to the story. “Remember I told you the man said he was an ordained preacher. So, yeah, the graveside service.”

Someone's radio was singing country blues, a forlorn love song. Two kids from a nearby campsite scattered pebbles on the grave. The little girl, her feet wiggling in pink flip-flops, sniffled. The brother whispered, “Shut up, snot face.” The preacher and his wife lowered their heads and pressed their palms, fingers to the sky. “God bless this little fella. May this little fella rest forever in the arms of his Maker.” His hands shook. Then he made the sign of the cross. That gesture—the sign of the cross—did it for me. No real born-again would touch that symbol.

I lean forward, palms on thighs, elbows akimbo, and run my eyes past each woman. Their expressions become wary, as though I am unpredictable, which maybe I am. I lower my voice. “Let me tell you what I felt. I felt a cold, stabbing hatred toward that man. And I still do.” A bat flits by. I flick a hand before resuming. “I told him he owed me two thousand bucks.”

“You actually said that to him?”

Eyes narrowed, I look steadily in the direction of the woman asking. After the so-called burial, I left the campground, drove into town, and parked under a streetlight in front of a drugstore to wait for daylight, then drove like a maniac to get to Myrna's. Now all I'm getting is flack.

Myrna emerges from the house carrying a basket of sound-makers on her hip, and states, “Bats are good luck, by the way. They mean a departed spirit is listening. And, yes, she did say that. Those very words. ‘You owe me two thousand bucks.' Teacup poodles are expensive.” Myrna has long, Pocahontas-black hair, shiny and straight, with an illegal eagle feather tucked into a leather sweatband. She hands a shaker with fur decoration to the woman who spoke. “We used to call these rattles. They are not rattles—kids use rattles. These are shakers. You don't rattle them, you swish them back and forth, like a tide. This one is made from turtle shell.” She gives out two gourd shakers. “The relationship between Suzanne and her little dog was in the formative stage. She'd only had him for less than a month.”

I pull my knees up, rest the heels of my clogs on the edge of the chair cushion. “The old shit gave me fifty dollars.”

Pink wisps of clouds move through the deepening blue.

Someone murmurs.

“What?”

“To put a price on love.”

Thank God the bottle of tequila is coming my way. At least these strangers and I have one thing in common—the hope of getting smashed. I reach for my shot glass. “It was a matter of principle.” I'm determined to make my point between pouring and gulping, throat burning. “Besides, I didn't love Baby. Not yet.”

“Love takes time.” Myrna hands out a rain-stick and some leather bells. “Being sexually impulsive, I've learned that lesson the hard way.” She flutters into the house.

The women laugh and glance at one another and wait for Myrna to return. This time she's lugging a tall cowhide drum. She places the drum next to me and gazes toward the mountains. “The Moon goddess is on her way. This is a night for dreams, insight, a night for truth. She has gone to a lot of trouble to bring us into her consciousness.”

Someone starts to make a joke—maybe a joke about the hard-working moon—and stops. Someone else giggles. Faces are less distinct; the light is disappearing as the moon brightens a cleft in the mountains. Myrna takes her seat, uses her knuckles to hit the stretched hide surface of her hand drum, then swishes an open hand over the top, the sound like sifting sand. Everyone seems still, watching and waiting. Breathing in, what I inhale is tension, so I say, “Do you want to hear more about my dead dog?” No one laughs. Myrna's hand sweeps the drum's surface. “‘I have arrived in heaven.' This is a quotation from Cochise. Imagine him here. Imagine his suffering, his stalwart resistance, the truths he had to face. He said, ‘I am alone in the world . . . I have drunk of the waters of the Dragoon Mountains and they have cooled me. I do not want to leave here.'”

Feet shuffle. Someone kicks a stone.

Myrna whispers, “Let she who needs to speak do so.”

My thought is,
She must make up these lines on the fly.

The woman with the rose tattoo says, “Okay, I'll start. I steal money from my husband's wallet. He doesn't have a clue. I feel like a kid, the cookie jar thing.”

“Revenge,” someone offers.

“Revenge?”

I recognize a defensiveness similar to my own and pipe up, “Yeah, well. Revenge for making her live out here in this hellhole.”

Now they laugh. It's getting dark enough so that their faces meld into the warming orange colours the mountains throw into the violet sky. Myrna's drum stops and we're quiet. I reach for another shot of tequila.

A small voice says, “Me, I had an affair. It was early on so don't bother mentioning it to him now.” A ripple of laugher runs around the circle. In between each story there is silence. Bells jingle, gourds comment.

Myrna motions that I should stay seated and hold the cowhide drum between my thighs. She demonstrates how to use the beater, a wooden stick wrapped in deer leather, then stands, holding her hand drum ready. Everyone rises and forms a semicircle facing the mountains.

Myrna calls out, “Mountain spirits, Moon goddess, hear us.” She hits her drum. One, two, three, thirteen times. As the moon rises, Myrna begins to chant. Her voice, warbling deep in her chest, sounds eerie and so strong that the vibration thumps through the bones in my own chest. I bang the powwow drum, listen to Myrna, and soon get the rhythm and even give the singing a try. As the moon becomes a yellow globe, we're chanting, “Way ha, way ya, ya hey ya hey, wah hey ya hey wah hey yo.”